It is a good article, sadly the ones who tend to disagree are also the ones that usually says:

"It just took time, it wasn't difficult. (And in the same breath say XIV is difficult when it's just memorizing a script)" "People don't have time to play MMOs these days so XIV is superior" "The game was so slow blah blah" "Nostalgia only made you like the game" (This seems to be the main argument from people that feel XIV is overall the better game.)

Since if Nostalgia/ "Rose tinted glasses" makes you like something, gaming and television sure did survive a long time being terrible and we just didn't realize it.

Honestly, MMOs used to bring people together far more, which was the main appeal to an MMORPG despite what some people try to say. People didn't play online games to play solo in a "changing world"..that actually makes no sense when you really think about it. These are different times, but very little in these modern MMOs tend to actually bring people together, and the few content that does..is virtually meaningless or more of an annoyance depending on your experiences.

That's why they need more 8man content and more content that isn't there to just hold your hand, since even in the group content, this game has conditioned you to "work for yourself" since very little of the story could be experienced with friends, which isn't necessarily bad, but the tunnelvision is insane because there's very little working together aside mechanics that REQUIRE a group effort. XI and most older MMOs (even WoW) conditioned you to work together and rely on each other almost from the get go. You could solo, sure, but once you hit a certain level range or story segment, you had to work together.

The only issue was LATER in a game's life that it was hard to complete older content that people had no more use for doing. The same happens with XIV, which is why instead of creating new content, they force us into old content to keep it populated DESPITE following a vertical progression design.

"It just took time, it wasn't difficult. (And in the same breath say XIV is difficult when it's just memorizing a script)" "People don't have time to play MMOs these days so XIV is superior" "The game was so slow blah blah" "Nostalgia only made you like the game" (This seems to be the main argument from people that feel XIV is overall the better game.)

Fortunately, very few people here (if any) agree with these points.

I will say though that the type of difficulty that made FFXI great is not the kind of scripted difficulty that exists in XIV. Success in XIV was about mastering the game within the game. It was as much about endgame logistics as much as it was perfectly timing your abilities with attacks that could come at any time. Without the logistics, though, you had no chance -- and ultimately that (combined with the lack of instanced dungeons and duty finders) is why people came together.

And FFXI also made it much, much easier for people to come together than in FFXIV. The latter needs more XI-style endgame content for groups of variable sizes where less-experienced players can jump right in without dooming the entire run.

It is a good article, sadly the ones who tend to disagree are also the ones that usually says:

"It just took time, it wasn't difficult. (And in the same breath say XIV is difficult when it's just memorizing a script)" "People don't have time to play MMOs these days so XIV is superior" "The game was so slow blah blah" "Nostalgia only made you like the game" (This seems to be the main argument from people that feel XIV is overall the better game.

Except that most of that is true.

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"It just took time, it wasn't difficult."

Mostly true. While there was some legitimately difficult content, most things in FFXI fell into the category of "waiting around for something." Be it a NM pop, party invite, coffer spawn, JP midnight, whatever. I don't know about you, but I spent WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more time waiting for things than actually doing things.

That's not inherently bad, but you can't deny that it's true.

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"People don't have time to play MMOs these days so XIV is superior"

This is also true for a lot of people. It's not 2004 any more. The average player is older now and doesn't necessarily have the time or inclination to sit around doing nothing meaningful for most of their play session. That's why modern MMOs are such much faster paced, and why things like MOBAs are so popular. People like being able to have fun immediately and quickly. Yes, there's something to be said for the feeling of satisfaction that comes from waiting, but if you don't have the time to dedicate to it then you'll never get that feeling anyway. In that case you may as well play something with faster, if lesser rewards.

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"The game was so slow blah blah"

You're not seriously going to try and argue this one, are you?

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"Nostalgia only made you like the game"

Of course not. Nostalga doesn't happen in real time. It does however probably play a large part in how us former players see it now.

This many years and several games later, FFXI is still the most fun I've ever had in an MMO. That said, I have no interest in starting it up again because intellectually I know that it won't live up to my memories. That doesn't negate all the fun I had all those years I spent playing, but there's no denying that nostalgia plays at least some part in how I see the game now.

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Since if Nostalgia/ "Rose tinted glasses" makes you like something, gaming and television sure did survive a long time being terrible and we just didn't realize it.

To some extent that true. Not that all television is bad, but I dare you to look at it objectively and tell me that there aren't some really terrible things that you like anyway just because you have fond memories of watching them.

There are a lot of shows I liked as a kid that I wonder about now. Was it really that good, or did I like it because I was 12 and they made a fart joke?

Karlina, just wanted you to know that I agree with everything you say.

My comment above about how "nobody here agrees with this" (paraphrasing myself) is only a reference to the loaded language and flawed connections Hio made in her post.

Like "FFXIV is superior because it takes less time!" We all know that's BS. To say "FFXIV is preferable because it takes less time!" would be far more honest and accurate.

For many of us, the question has never been which game is superior to the other. It's more about which game would we rather be playing right now, with all the perspective and responsibilities we have being 10 years older.

For many of us, the question has never been which game is superior to the other. It's more about which game would we rather be playing right now, with all the perspective and responsibilities we have being 10 years older.

This exactly. It isn't about one being superior to the other, which is an entirely subjective statement anyway. Everyone's going to have their own preference when it comes to how they want to spend their leisure time. FFXI is inarguably a slower paced game, that doesn't make it better or worse than another game, just slower. So if someone prefers a faster-paced game, they might prefer FFXIV over FFXI because of that. That doesn't make FFXIV a superior game, just more preferred by that person at that time.

I have a ton of great memories from playing FFXI back "in the day." But after 12 years more experience and being 12 years older than I was then, I can also objectively look back on FFXI and recognize that it wasn't a perfect game. Recognizing it wasn't a perfect game doesn't mean I didn't have fun with it and it doesn't invalidate my memories.

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svlyons wrote:

If random outcomes aren't acceptable to you, then don't play with random people.

The thing about nostalgia is it tends to be one-sided. For one person who had no issue doing any content in XI, you'd have another who hated all the logistics/grind/waiting. Neither are technically wrong, but the former have a bad habit of even imagining the latter type existed, if not putting them down in the process because they're impatient/unskilled/anti-social. As for those who hated something or other, presuming they're even willing to talk about the game objectively, then there's likely something they did enjoy.

Thing about older generation MMOs is that they often promoted micro-communities (guilds/linkshells) as opposed to the greater good of every player. In some cases, this meant directly competing. In others, it meant you weren't getting something done if you weren't part of XYZ group. I still balk at the fact people demanded applications then, and perhaps even now, depending on how hardcore you approach these titles. The lessons learned from back then have translated to things like cross-server matchmaking and other LFG mechanisms, as others have pointed out, people want to the play their given game not so much as waiting to have a chance to.

Technically, we still haven't really slain the demon of exclusivity, and at that root, the exclusionary practices of MMO endgames. And it's not that people want hand-outs or whatever, but the realization that forcing highly organized group content simply isn't consistently feasible for everyone. And these players still deserve a meaningful endgame as long they're buying the titles, paying the sub fees, and contributing to the community in their own ways. Put bluntly, for all the progress the genre has made in the past decade, it's still shallow both mechanically and socially.

is that it's still hardship. There really isn't much more that needs to be said there. FFXI was wildly criticized for it's difficulty and grind, and it kept so many people away. The positive trade off was that those that stayed, were forced to become closer knit.

You objectively cannot argue that FFXI was anything but a niche game. Was that niche happy with 'their' game, absolutely. That world had something special going on for it for those that conformed to the environment and the social circles stemming from it.

The rest is rose tinted glasses.

Wild Cheating, the constant bickering and talking down to players who did not conform to the meta of the patch, the RMT, the PKs, the massive miss behaviors, the poor turn around on any and all updates until FFXIV came out.

All of that gets glossed over when we remember the things we miss about a game. That's the nostalgia factor. We argued, complained, ranted, banged our heads against the wall when it came to FFXI, for years. Time takes out the sting of these things and you begin to value the good times that aren't repeatable - that's nostalgia, and yes, it effects people's hindsight. It's right to call it out.

Yes, cool, the community was pretty neat together (if you were in the right crowds for yourself). I still find that in FFXIV (I actually went looking.) - I'm just not forced to try to mesh with people I don't like for the sake of getting anything done now.

Cept Raiding, That's still ********* (Wow, even European curses are filtered.)

I still balk at the fact people demanded applications then, and perhaps even now, depending on how hardcore you approach these titles.

It's still a thing in most serious progression guilds. It works really well too. If someone isn't willing to spend 10 minutes filling out a form and talking to you for a little while, they probably aren't going to be putting in the effort necessary for serious progression.

It's all about what you want out of the game and then finding other people who want to play at the same level (whatever level that may be).

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svlyons wrote:

If random outcomes aren't acceptable to you, then don't play with random people.

Except one's ability to compose a sentence, paragraph, or whatever the "employer" is specifically looking for doesn't translate to how well they can actually play. It's why you should just cut that step and actually play with someone to see if they both fit and seem sociable enough.

Further, it's the super serious tone that leads to things like probation periods where someone can spend weeks/months really getting nothing out of the arrangement only to potentially find they're better off elsewhere, or worse, get kicked, repeating the cycle elsewhere. I know token systems mitigate this to a degree, but as long as random drops are still a thing, priority lists will continue to exist and that just feeds into the exclusivity angle.

For all the moaning people may do about being forced to play the way a dev demands, its hypocritical to not find fault in players doing the same to themselves. Especially if there are alternatives.

Except one's ability to compose a sentence, paragraph, or whatever the "employer" is specifically looking for doesn't translate to how well they can actually play. It's why you should just cut that step and actually play with someone to see if they both fit and seem sociable enough.

You're right, composing a sentence has little bearing on ability to play (although it may have bearing on ability to communicate and receive instruction but that's another matter). But the fact of the matter is a serious raiding guild (and I used to be the recruitment officer for one) can receive literally dozens of applications per month. You have 4 raid lockouts in most months and you have room for maybe 2 or 3 trials per raid night without putting your runs at risk. So you need something to help you screen out people who are just obviously unsuitable to begin with (so you're not wasting your time and their's). Asking someone to fill out a form correctly and have a short conversation with you isn't asking a lot and it saves a ton of hassle later. I can tell you that of the people who got through our application and interview process, about 75% of them went on to become solid raiders. Imagine if we didn't have one.

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Further, it's the super serious tone that leads to things like probation periods where someone can spend weeks/months really getting nothing out of the arrangement only to potentially find they're better off elsewhere, or worse, get kicked, repeating the cycle elsewhere. I know token systems mitigate this to a degree, but as long as random drops are still a thing, priority lists will continue to exist and that just feeds into the exclusivity angle.

We used EPGP which, if you're not familiar with it, is a system that rewards attendance directly while keeping drops fairly distributed and attempts to forestall the problems other point systems have with (for instance) hoarding or collusion. Trials were at a lower priority than raiders when it came to drops, but they earned points just the same so that when their trial period was over most of them immediately got 1 or 2 pieces of gear they wanted because they hadn't gotten much during their trial. Again, we took steps ahead of time to ensure that the people we accepted as trials had a high likelihood of becoming raiders.

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For all the moaning people may do about being forced to play the way a dev demands, its hypocritical to not find fault in players doing the same to themselves. Especially if there are alternatives.

Of course there are alternatives. They can play with a different group of people that have different standards or want something different out of their raid nights. Every raiding guild is unique and every group of people is unique. My suggestion for someone who wants to join a top guild but objects to the application process is to pick a different guild.

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svlyons wrote:

If random outcomes aren't acceptable to you, then don't play with random people.

Considering the era it was released, it was also wildly successful. Most niche MMOs didn't get anywhere near as much popularity as XI did. Which, in your own words:

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All of that gets glossed over

It didn't hit millions upon millions of subs, but no MMO back then did besides Maple Story, which not only came out a year after XI, but at the time was THE most played MMORPG, ever. MS still technically beat out WoW despite how successful it was however it wasn't until WoW did MMOs slowly move out of the "niche" category. So realistically, MMORPGs in general was a niche genre, so it's kind of hard to be a niche MMO in a niche genre, unless it's something like comparing Smash Bros to other fighters of the time. Since you can't really argue that there was a certain group of players who played MMOs and a certain who played every other kind, very rarely did you find gamers who set MMOs into their gametime with every other game back then because as said, it was niche.

You had the odd person or two who played WoW full time then cracked out their GBA and DS, but it wasn't as common as it was today to play an MMO for 2 hours, crack out some Halo, then go back to your MMO. Once MMOs became far less structure is when it started becoming mainstream and honestly, when the design of MMOs started going downhill. MMOs simply weren't designed to be played "casually" back then which people love to forget that the whole reason they were niche to begin with is because it was the type of game you dedicated actual time to compared to playing 20 rounds of Halo or a Lan party at a sleep over.

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Wild Cheating

This happens in every MMO, including XIV, so no one really "glosses over" that. It would be unheard of to see an MMO with no cheating. The thing with XI, however, is the progression and itemization were quite different from the norm at the time, so the cheating only really happened with ground kings, which only A FEW people in the grand scheme of things did. That's why, when speaking of glossing over things, you joined an HNMls which were indeed known for cheating, or you joined linkshells that did every other content where cheating rarely if at all ever was a problem.

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the constant bickering and talking down to players who did not conform to the meta of the patch

Happens in every MMO, including "non-niche" MMOs of today. Even more so in vertical progression MMOs because there's literally nothing else you can do because there's only 1 progression that "matters." XIV for example, there's no excuse to not have at minimum full enhanced Eso gear or a set of Lore gear by now if you were a consistent player. That is when people "talk down" to others because not caring doesn't necessarily mean other people are "conforming"...that kinda just sounds like personal bitterness.

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the RMT, the PKs, the massive miss behaviors

Every MMO. Just like no one forgets 2005 when IGE sold 1mil gil per 1$ and you would be lying through your teeth if you say no one bought gil back then or even halfway got tempted yourself because the economy of XI was FOREVER changed since that day. So it'd be hard to say someone would gloss over the "negatives" when at the same time you tend to have people get attacked/berated for only focusing on negatives or shortcomings of a particular game, so I don't think anyone ever has glossed over anything bad, especially when it comes to XI.

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Time takes out the sting of these things and you begin to value the good times that aren't repeatable - that's nostalgia, and yes, it effects people's hindsight. It's right to call it out.

Which goes right back to when I stated, people tend to always state nostalgia makes you like something that supposedly wasn't good to begin with. Just like I can guarantee I can state I loved XI's soundtrack far more than XIV's and it'll be "because of nostalgia, the music wasn't really good because it was compressed and certain instruments were low quality. Now XIV's, THAT'S a masterpiece of a soundtrack!"

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Further, it's the super serious tone that leads to things like probation periods where someone can spend weeks/months really getting nothing out of the arrangement only to potentially find they're better off elsewhere, or worse, get kicked, repeating the cycle elsewhere. I know token systems mitigate this to a degree, but as long as random drops are still a thing, priority lists will continue to exist and that just feeds into the exclusivity angle.

Let's put it this way, we all know from the XI days you were basically a huge supporter of a particular style of RDM, which clearly didn't fit well into most Raiding styles and content. If it were not for "probation periods", said new RDM who only used their RDM for solo content or meleeing ending up getting the drops that would help the raid..would just hinder progression. Not even saying that in a bad way, but what was stopping you from getting gear you could ONLY get if you joined an actual EGLS (since you couldn't solo Dynamis and Limbus/Einherjar back then) and bailing during your probation period if they allowed free lots?

Yeah priority lists existed but it's how you rewarded your players in a fair manner or else joe blow DRG who has a naked 75 RDM could walk out with a duelist chapeau compared to main RDM who needed it that walks out with nothing simply because DRG had 781 DKP, DL.Chap costs 45 DKP, 75 RDM only had 30 DKP, realistically it goes to DRG, yes? There's the reason for priority lists.

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Except one's ability to compose a sentence, paragraph, or whatever the "employer" is specifically looking for doesn't translate to how well they can actually play. It's why you should just cut that step and actually play with someone to see if they both fit and seem sociable enough.

In all honesty though, while playing on the NA side for raiding I did notice that while it doesn't really translate to actual skill people that could actually form a proper sentence and properly fill out an application versus "lolz invite me pls i 1800 dps drg lore wep a7s on farm mode fam" seemed to always actually been the better players because they not only took the time to fill out the app, but they seem far more reasonable when you start talking to them than the person who feels their 1800 dps should speak for itself when you try them out and they still get outdps'd by the DRK. I know this from experience because I pull 1200-1400 DPS on my DRK and our WAR/PLD pulls 1300-1450 (WAR)/ 1100-1280 (PLD) dps as of now and the NA group I run with actually use me as a barrier of entry because if you can't outdps a tank you're honestly not playing your DPS job right. Not gloating but, it definitely says a lot if your tanks are lifting most of the dps burden.

The step isn't cut because it shows if someone is actually serious, much like you won't find ANY employer that will cut the resume step or interview step and go straight to hiring you because it's not so much what's on it (though helps) it's the effort. Sure you could get shoved it if someone you know works there or if the boss is your mother ala family business, but that's what the probation period is for, to see if you can walk the walk and not just talk the talk.

Give me a f*cking break. Just because I believe SE screwed up with RDM in XI has no bearing on my ability to play and interact with others. Because I'll give you a hint: I mastered more than one job. If I'm really going to generally critique that particular back-in-the-day endgame scene, it'd involve people demanding you set alarm clocks around pop timers, among the general rarity of things/loot RNG. Sure, I hated how people treated RDM like a WHM and left WHM in the dust, but no amount of me telling people WHM was still functional could sink in to the collective hivemind. All I could personally do was play with and include other WHMs if on RDM. Otherwise, you have zero ******* knowledge about how I played and don't even pretend to think you did. That's just the usual BG-tier bullsh*t I put up with back in the day both here and in their "Let's collude to pick on people on the OF!" type threads. And when they wind up getting banned for their generally asinine behavior, they try to wear at as a badge of honor while being all, "Well, it's a cesspool anyway!"

That's not the kind of community I personally seek to reward and encourage. And if you want to take a step further with the implication I've never aided anyone here while waving that flag of, "She liked RDM melee, so she's a moron!" well, again, kindly go f*ck yourself. Actually, forget the pleasantries. Your own history of putting down NA players and slinging the typical elitist rhetoric really should remind me that you've earned no kindness.

Your own history of putting down NA players and slinging the typical elitist rhetoric really should remind me that you've earned no kindness.

When you play in two distinctly different communities of course it will seem like "putting down" since you belong to one of them. Also drop the "elitist" term, there's nothing elitist about the fact people preferred a certain playstyle when you hit end-game. Though once again, that's typically what's seen in NA communities. You take that as putting down, that's just the culture.

Just like people who "master content" quickly tend to be considered Hardcore, rather than just realizing the content itself isn't exactly challenging. That's something you find more so in NA servers in MMOs because that's just how they define the general "standard" of what's casual and hardcore. In Japanese servers, it's not really seen as "hardcore" or "casual" in the same light.

However you did kind of prove my point about some things though.

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Just because I believe SE screwed up with RDM in XI has no bearing on my ability to play and interact with others.

Which is exactly my point, you may feel one way about something and it may not mesh too well with others, which is why they want to see if you can walk the walk.

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Otherwise, you have zero ******* knowledge about how I played and don't even pretend to think you did.

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slinging the typical elitist rhetoric

Yet you can do exactly that. Alright then.

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And when they wind up getting banned for their generally asinine behavior,

You do realize you can get banned on the OF of FFXIV for merely stating facts, right? No matter how you slice it all it takes is someone to get **** blasted and report you and you'll trigger a ban. It's not even properly moderated most of the time, people can get banned if they show a screenshot with someone's name it. So don't even try to link it with a certain attitude/behavior lol.

When you time and time and time again effectively espouse that NA players are retards, then yes, I put that in the label of elitist rhetoric right along with talk of welfare, not wanting challenge, getting **** mailed to you when you log in, and other buzzwords.

You want to come off as really confident knowing what "we" are, but as someone more prone to wading in this particular scene because I don't jump from game to game with a specific circle of friends, what I CAN tell you is that most people are actually pretty chill. Bad apples here and there? Absolutely. Yet, we don't exactly log in thinking how we might ***** some people over today. I can't quite say the same for some people about XI back in the day.

Otherwise, I may as well point out a particular trend of the XI elitist. Let's use DRK's elemental magic as an example. A) It sucks. Don't use it ever. If you use it, you're dumb. or B) What could we do to make it work?

I happen to fall into the B category, and certainly applied it to RDM in those particular topics. Naturally, I was met with counters of impossibility, that it shouldn't happen, or worse. Yet, I dare not confuse complacency with enlightenment. Just because that's how something is doesn't mean that's how it should remain, and stagnation being anathema to MMOs has been one of my long-standing philosophies.

You're mad things have changed, we get it. That doesn't mean they're worse. No one really wants to read the MMO equivalent ramblings of "Back in my day..." stuff. And that's really where people harp on the nostalgia argument. We're not in the Wild Wild West of MMOs anymore. Cope.

Since you know, I'm the sole person in the world that finds things tend to be on the bad side more so than good on the NA clusters, nor have I ever used the word "retards"...so don't add that word to my thought process (btw even the linked topics got far more traction, so you know...) ;) So it's not even putting anyone down, it's simply stating what A LOT of people state and feel, you just can't always openly express it on OF because, as said, you will EASILY get banned even if you're not being mean.

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You're mad things have changed, we get it. That doesn't mean they're worse. No one really wants to read the MMO equivalent ramblings of "Back in my day..." stuff. And that's really where people harp on the nostalgia argument. We're not in the Wild Wild West of MMOs anymore. Cope.

I don't recall being mad about anything though, I just don't sugarcoat things.

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Otherwise, I may as well point out a particular trend of the XI elitist. Let's use DRK's elemental magic as an example. A) It sucks. Don't use it ever. If you use it, you're dumb. or B) What could we do to make it work?

I fall into B as well, but I'm not going to fall for the "traps" that others seem to. A is certainly true though and has nothing to do with elitism. You are infact dumb if you sit there and nuke with DRK's elemental magic. You're wasting MP you could have saved for Absorbs, Drain/Aspir, Dread Spikes or ****, stuns. Someone saying "you're dumb" isn't really an insult or anything..you really aren't being that smart with your casting lol. Heck I tank and solo some stuff on my DRK even back pre Abyssea era, so I know all too well how DRK's magic situation is. It'd be like if a PLD only ever cast Cure and Banish II.

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I put that in the label of elitist rhetoric right along with talk of welfare, not wanting challenge, getting **** mailed to you when you log in, and other buzzwords.

The thing with this though...people keep wanting SE to nerf content that isn't anywhere near challenging, so it's VERY easy to think people don't want want an actual challenge.

The thing with this though...people keep wanting SE to nerf content that isn't anywhere near challenging, so it's VERY easy to think people don't want want an actual challenge.

I saw a great forum juxtaposition a few weeks ago...

Thread titled: Blizzard took away all the buttons, rotations are mindless

Right above

Thread titled: Rotations are too complicated, I can't keep up

I'm paraphrasing because I don't have the exact titles here and those threads are lost to the nether regions of that particular site's backlog at this point. They were started by different people each with thousands of posts on their record (so probably not socks). Right there next to each other like that. It was amazing.

Y'know what it signifies pretty clearly? That people are different. Different people at different skill levels with different experiences and different expectations want different things out of a game.

I've mentioned to you before that generalizing is basically always wrong. "People keep wanting SE to..." is too broad. Some dude on the forums wanted SE to nerf something he or his static couldn't handle. That's a far cry from an entire userbase making a demand, and frankly you're never going to get an entire userbase to agree on anything... ever.

When Seriha talks about your tone being elitist, I believe this is what she's talking about:

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Though once again, that's typically what's seen in NA communities. You take that as putting down, that's just the culture.

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That's something you find more so in NA servers in MMOs because that's just how they define the general "standard" of what's casual and hardcore. In Japanese servers, it's not really seen as "hardcore" or "casual" in the same light.

Neither of those statements was probably intended to come off as super snobby, but they both did. And it's hardly the first time you've alluded to NA players just being inherently inferior to JP players. That not only sounds elitist, it IS elitist. It may not be what you're intending, but it's what you're doing. So maybe pay attention to that (unless it's intentional, then go nuts, but don't try to hide behind denial then).

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svlyons wrote:

If random outcomes aren't acceptable to you, then don't play with random people.

Attempting to grade people is a horrible metric since it's subject to so much variance it's not even funny.

Nonetheless, I call it all "rhetoric" because it's been commonly observed enough for myself and others to have noted a trend out of it, and it's not something one should really be proud about not being alone on. Vocal minority? Most likely. I wouldn't really take their feedback to heart just as I wouldn't some random person asking for nerfs without some compelling logic behind the request. Otherwise, it behooves any MMO dev to have some logging mechanisms in place tracking things like how often a dungeon was accessed, how many times it was cleared, who wiped to what, and then some. It's when you compare that kind of data against complaints where you decide whether or not something is warranted. And if a dev isn't even taking those steps, then they're failing to really monitor the quality of their product.

As it is, most forum content you're going to see will be negative. That's just how it is. Some of it is happy people simply playing the game. A fair bit is some people just not having the time to dedicate to the forum PvP. There will be noise, but there will also be truths. Sugarcoated or not, however, not all truths are facts.

Then there's just people trolling for the sake of trolling. PLD joins a DF and refuses to tank? Well, you kick him. Waiting for a replacement sucks, but this arguably segues into the discussion about party (in)flexibility, and I mean more from the dev end than that of player trending. And some people are understandably bitter about how MMOs have (not) changed in recent years. I'm not immune to this, if it isn't obvious, but it's pretty rare you'll find me speaking from the position of exclusivity/prestige. I'd rather people have more opportunity to experience all content and progress equally than locking things off to a small subset (because we make it hard for all the wrong reasons). It's not asking for something for nothing. It's asking for something to get that something since the something else doesn't really jive.

Finally, figuring out how games work isn't an issue for me, and I'm not afraid to ask or look into something if I don't know. Not everyone is like that, so I also need to be willing to teach to the receptive. I won't hesitate to kick troublemakers in environments where it's possible, but sometimes people are a nuisance outside of direct interaction. And we're still kinda helpless on that front, too, as I don't believe individual blacklists lead to fixing problems, it just ignores them. Anyone who thinks removing stuff like LFG tools will make a game community better isn't looking at it from the right angle.

If you find WoW's rotations difficult at this point you're just a terrible player. Which is fine, play the game how you want. Those players shouldn't be catered to though, especially to the detriment of everyone else that knows what they're doing.

If you find WoW's rotations difficult at this point you're just a terrible player. Which is fine, play the game how you want. Those players shouldn't be catered to though, especially to the detriment of everyone else that knows what they're doing.

It was to show the juxtaposition and illustrate how all sorts of different people of all skill levels play these games.

But I guess I know which side you fall on.

____________________________

svlyons wrote:

If random outcomes aren't acceptable to you, then don't play with random people.

I've mentioned to you before that generalizing is basically always wrong. "People keep wanting SE to..." is too broad. Some dude on the forums wanted SE to nerf something he or his static couldn't handle. That's a far cry from an entire userbase making a demand, and frankly you're never going to get an entire userbase to agree on anything... ever.

Which lies the problem: Even if it's "some dude"...SE, namely Yoshi, listens to said player more often than not. Take Amdapor Keep (normal), it was by far no where near a hard dungeon. Yet patch after patch people complained and complained for it to get nerfed more and more because they simply didn't want to deal with mechanics. This is why I "generalize" and largely why I say between playing with both playerbases, you truly do notice things. For example in comparison, Amdapor Keep complaints on the JP side were largely bosses had too much HP for that point in the game's progression since it was related to acquiring a relic weapon, so the dungeon itself was seen as being "too buffed" for how weak we were.

Complaints on the NA side largely fell in the realm of "things hit too hard" and "the adds on demon wall makes the boss too hard" which is why you get the "elitist response" of "you shouldn't even be seeing hornet spawns" because realistically, it should indeed be dead before the hornets spawns. Even in the early days you normally could kill the demon wall shortly after the hornets spawned or you killed the hornets then went back to the wall but that seemed like the most impossible thing to do, which of course lead to AK being nerfed about a good 4 times during ARR lol.

Pharos too got hit with the nerf bat even though it too wasn't hard which again came down to people not wanting to do mechanics. It's not even about the learning curve comparatively, it's about flatout refusal you run into a lot. The only legit complaint was the gear it dropped (old 1.0 Darkhold gear) was far too low ilvl for the dungeon difficulty.

Then came Steps of Faith. You not only had NPCS YELLING AT YOU WHAT TO DO, but the boss largely ignored you meaning maybe you should focus on what the NPCs were saying to get through it? People were flooding the forums begging for nerfs because yeah it walled storyline, but why not earn the story, like every other FF game? People literally just had to work cannons and a dragon killer and you won...but somehow that was just....so hard. It's hard not to generalize a playerbase because you could say "a lot of people in general complained" but it would be sort of wrong because it really is apparent which playerbase tends to do the most complaining about stuff lol. People say SE never listens to anyone but the JP...but honestly, they listen to the JP far less than anything because the bigger playerbase is the NA+EU playerbase combined.

****, on a more relevant note, the Midas Savage nerfs ****** everyone off who did it because while it was a nice change overall, they;ve NEVER nerfed raid content DURING the actual raid cycle before, which means above all they do indeed listen to "very few people" because really no one openly complained about Midas, especially not Midas 5 and 6, at least none who were able to actually get through it. You mostly had people who couldn't do mechanics (notice pattern?) complain the most.

That's why you see the saying "it seems like people don't want a challenge" because something that technically isn't a challenge, seem to get nerfed pretty frequently. **** look at how quick on NA/EU's OF you seen people pushing for Weeping City and Final Steps nerf during the first week lol. It wasn't even the typical "no one knows how to do it" because gear wise, you technically outgear it because upgraded Eso and Lore gear has already been LONG established, it was just people not wanting to learn the content for quite awhile. That's why if you do it now you'll see people do it extremely smoothly or horrendously and it all comes down to mechanics and not because they don't know it either because you can't have multiple pieces of Weeping City gear and not know the mechanics, because that means you've done at least 2-3 weeks of it to learn the easy mechanics.

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Y'know what it signifies pretty clearly? That people are different. Different people at different skill levels with different experiences and different expectations want different things out of a game.

Which above all is why they need to go back to the format of making content where people are expected to actually IMPROVE if they want to complete it rather than pandering to the type of people who would sooner quit if something is "too hard". Not saying it in a bad way as I know that would be money walking out the door, but honestly, this game doesnt really give you a reason to "get better" or "learn how to play" with most of its content because by chance there is a type of check like DPS or such, good chances you're paired up with enough people that can carry you through it. We've all been in those Titan HMs where 5/8 people die to dumb mechanics or fall off and you have a tank and healer or two basically chipping away for the next 30 minutes carrying the whole team. Same with alliance content, if it wasn't for VERY specific mechanics, ONE party could actually clear the majority of Weeping City, there's just mechanics that require more than 8 people to properly do or else, well you don't even need more than a single party. This is why up until 2.5/3.x the game's content setup was perfect because you could actually go in order and improve as you go because the difficulty actually ramped up slowly - Coil was the ultimate end-game but you could still get gear in order to tackle it outside of coil because EX primials (especially Shiva and Ramuh) and Syrcus Tower/World of Darkness provided not only alternate BiS pieces but a stepping stone of fights with having to work together far more than Labyrinth for example.

Even if it's "some dude"...SE, namely Yoshi, listens to said player more often than not. Take Amdapor Keep (normal), it was by far no where near a hard dungeon. Yet patch after patch people complained and complained for it to get nerfed more and more because they simply didn't want to deal with mechanics. This is why I "generalize" and largely why I say between playing with both playerbases, you truly do notice things.

No, SE doesn't listen to said player "more often than not." SE does what SE wants, and changes to the game have reflected the wishes of the full spectrum of gamers. Hardcore players complained that Coil was too easy, so then we got Coil 2. Then midcore players complained Coil 2 was too hard (while casuals still couldn't complete it), and then we got Coil 3. And then casuals were satisfied with story mode in Midas while the hardcores got Savage Mode. And since then, Savage Mode has been adjusted based on outcry from the hardcore players.

Do you hardcores get everything you want on a silver platter at the end of a red carpet? No? Well boo effing hoo. Neither does anyone else.

Also, remember that your experiences in FFXIV are not normal. I've already broken down the data in past posts. You play on the one JP server that has a "high" raiding completion rate (which is still ridiculously low for content you say is stupidly easy, especially on your mega-awesome JP server); all the other JP servers are right on par with the completion rates on NA servers. Hardcore endgame raiders make up a silver of this game's playerbase, and for you to repeatedly project your biases from such a skewed perspective is bonkers.

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Which above all is why they need to go back to the format of making content where people are expected to actually IMPROVE if they want to complete it rather than pandering to the type of people who would sooner quit if something is "too hard"

No, no, no. Just no.

As we've covered repeatedly in these forums -- and as you should have known before you became emotionally invested in 2.x and beyond -- the relaunch of XIV was not designed to be a hardcore game. The game already has enough hardcore-oriented eight-man content. We need a more diverse endgame scene so that people who don't like hardcore raiding have more reasons to stay engaged.

Complaints on the NA side largely fell in the realm of "things hit too hard" and "the adds on demon wall makes the boss too hard" which is why you get the "elitist response" of "you shouldn't even be seeing hornet spawns" because realistically, it should indeed be dead before the hornets spawns. Even in the early days you normally could kill the demon wall shortly after the hornets spawned or you killed the hornets then went back to the wall but that seemed like the most impossible thing to do, which of course lead to AK being nerfed about a good 4 times during ARR lol.

I always laugh a little when you make statements like this. Maybe your amazing JP server really is just that amazing, but you and I seem to remember 2.0 very differently.

The boss should be dead or close before the adds even spawn? Sure, for raiders in i90 gear maybe. Not so much for the random DF party where everyone is only i50ish with maybe a couple pieces of darklight. Between the adds and the time limit that boss could be literally unkillable depending on gear and party comp (if you had 2 BRDs you didn't have stuns to stop Final Sting and didn't even get an offensive LB.)

People didn't want it nerfed because "waaaa, I'm too lazy to kill adds." The wanted it nerfed because it was actually overtuned compared to the rest of the dungeon.

If you find WoW's rotations difficult at this point you're just a terrible player. Which is fine, play the game how you want. Those players shouldn't be catered to though, especially to the detriment of everyone else that knows what they're doing.

It was to show the juxtaposition and illustrate how all sorts of different people of all skill levels play these games.

But I guess I know which side you fall on.

If you're playing baseball and one kid on the team is really bad, you don't say "ok guys let's dumb our game down so this one kid can play"

You kick him out and get a better kid, and hope that the other kid will become a better player

No, SE doesn't listen to said player "more often than not." SE does what SE wants, and changes to the game have reflected the wishes of the full spectrum of gamers. Hardcore players complained that Coil was too easy, so then we got Coil 2. Then midcore players complained Coil 2 was too hard (while casuals still couldn't complete it), and then we got Coil 3. And then casuals were satisfied with story mode in Midas while the hardcores got Savage Mode. And since then, Savage Mode has been adjusted based on outcry from the hardcore players.

They've already designed Coil 1-3 from the outset and we didn't see the results of the "outcry" until Final Coil, which is why people said it was extremely easy compared to Coil 1 and 2. People complained about Coil 2 because turn 4 of it required coordination ontop of playing at the top of your abilities. Even Twintania was easier but twisters were actually broken for QUITE awhile until SE fixed it as that was the hardest part of Turn 5 for most people clearing it.

Also, no one complained about A5 and A6S to the point SE nerfed it in the manner they did. No one. So what outcry are you talking about? The outcry from the group of people that believed Yoshi when he said Midas would be more akin to Coil difficulty? Or the non-existent outcry from the group of players who hit A7s within the first 2 weeks where the MAIN complaint from the progression groups were having to start over every time you wiped in A6S?

As you don't raid I'll explain it again:

None of the changes to A6S helped progression groups because the changes to it didn't do much of anything to help any of the actual problems with the encounter. Less dashes, less HP? Cool, how does that help the overall short timer to beat numerous bosses with no rest? The main nerf was on the final boss, which every group (who actually does the raid) already says is the easiest of the group, simply because it has only ONE rotation that it cycles through twice before wipe.

So again, which group was the outcry actually from? Because I actually keep up with the raid scene and I haven't once seen any progression complain like I've seen non-progression players complain.

Also:

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You play on the one JP server that has a "high" raiding completion rate (which is still ridiculously low for content you say is stupidly easy, especially on your mega-awesome JP server)

Once again - The way people does their unofficial Parse is by counting the ONCE A WEEK SINGLE DROP MINION AND MOUNT meaning the numbers will ALWAYS BE SKEWED until SE THEMSELVES release updated numbers. I asked before and never got an answer - You run in groups of 8, how could there be groups of 5 and 6 clearing A4S and A8S? That's impossible during the content's prime. When you break down the Clear rates, you kind of realize there's something off because even counting achievements throws it out of whack because on Sargatanas alone there was a HUGE merc scene for A4S.

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We need a more diverse endgame scene so that people who don't like hardcore raiding have more reasons to stay engaged.

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Which above all is why they need to go back to the format of making content where people are expected to actually IMPROVE if they want to complete it rather than pandering to the type of people who would sooner quit if something is "too hard"

So you know, back to the 2.x era of content setup like I stated, but apparently players having to improve is a bad thing. Still not sure how knowing how to play the game makes you "hardcore", especially in a game not designed to be hardcore.

Karlina wrote:

People didn't want it nerfed because "waaaa, I'm too lazy to kill adds." The wanted it nerfed because it was actually overtuned compared to the rest of the dungeon.

So it was overtuned so much so they had to nerf it about 4 times including removing the adds post 2x nerf to the same dungeon? AK must have been the peak of their development then.

So again, which group was the outcry actually from? Because I actually keep up with the raid scene

Apparently you ONLY keep up with the raiding community, which is so very, very small. Yet disproportionately active on that one JP server.

And are you kidding me about raiders not complaining? Good lord, do you even look at the OFs?

And you also further proved my point that some of SE'so changes are things nobody asks for, lol. SE is not ignoring the poor little raiding community whilst taking all its cues from the filthy casuals. SE is simply trying to improve a game that was never really meant to be a hardcore gaming hotbed in the first place. Which I've told you many times, and I'm shocked I've even needed to tell you this. It had been obvious this whole time.

Glad someone decided to engage Hio on the crap. I don't even bother. There isn't a counterpoint worth my response in any of what I glanced at, honestly.

FFXI worked for a small subset of people. It didn't for the majority. FFXI was not 'wildly successful' It was soundly crushed underfoot by its very next major competitor, so much that none have ever been able to repeat such a triumph to date - nor likely ever will, as WoW single handedly took the MMO titles from Niche to Mainstreeam.

People can pine for the days for when MMOs played to a particular niche - that's fine. But claiming it as anything else but nostalgia is just plain lieing, especially in the failure to acknowledge so many critical faults.

And yes, while some of those faults exist in other MMOs to this day, not do the unchecked degree they were. RMT pester players now. Then, they controlled the market - to the point that it founded the STFU. Players end up getting banned fairly quickly with cheating in FFXIV. Before? Salvage Duping, Wall of Virtue, Claim Bots dominance on Ground Kings - all years before any meaningful reaction was done to them, some not even being truely effective.

Except Wall of Virtue, but I brought that up intentionally to bring up the other point. How many years was it until it was out of the hat that SE intended for us to spend as much time on Jailer of Virtue as the initial Holiday event Treants in one sitting? It took a meltdown on PW and a news article to change that. How long was the Dragoon's Wyvern remain a 2hr skill when the balance around it was incredibly obvious? (Note:These questions are rhetorical, Hio, I won't be reading nor responding to your post.)

I love many things about FFXI. I still go back to play it occasionally. But those who try to defend its flaws or praise it blindly won't get any support from me.

Again, the problem with finding virtue in hardship is that you find yourself justifying hardship - that's not an argument that's going to catch traction with most people. Believe me, I've been on that side of the argument before.

Again, if people aren't performing "up to par" then the game itself isn't doing a good job in teach them how to play that way. Seriously, show me any quest/mission that's the effective equivalent of, "To be a good BLM, you must use your abilities in XYZ order!" It doesn't exist, so one shouldn't be dreadfully surprised when someone out there makes the connection that in spamming Blizzard, they never run out of MP, thus they can keep nuking infinitely regardless of the DPS drop. This further escalates into the inability to demand someone know of a particular website or video, as well. So, a lot of this comes back to the frustrated people being unwilling to teach while tagging that desire to something like wanting a grading system.

And I say it's flawed because it's something people could easily troll others on. Want to tank a DPS' grade? Don't cure them. Don't draw the mob's attention as the tank if they pull hate. It doesn't matter how well they actually know their rotations if they're dead, because you're doing 0 damage that way. "But the healer's grade would tank!" They've already got the advantage of faster queue times than a DPS and likely wouldn't suffer to being lower tier. Moreover, do we judge a healer as "better" if they simply healed more? Because knowing mechanics can lead to dodging damage, which technically means they'd be healing less over time. Which similarly applies to tanks soaking it up while obviously being reliant on the healer for sustainability.

The present solution, in absence of the game being better at teaching, is to make your own groups the old fashioned way. Yet, they want all the convenience of LFG tools without any of the risks. Sorry, trying to run from the alleged problem isn't fixing it. And like it or not, maybe ability bloat is a thing.

Not maybe, certinaly. If they expect the game to be playable with the controller they need to seriously rethink how they're creating their workflow. Level 50's rotation on Dragoon was nothing, even Monk's rotation in that regard. However at 60, I started hurting my wrist, on a controller, trying to keep the combat flow streamlined without dealing with the clunky macro set swap mechanic. Adding more is going to exacerbate that issue.

Honestly, icon swapping for straight combos would do well, and is a common mechanic in MMOs now. It quite possibly can be done with macros, but I maintain the stance that one should never have to become a programmer to play a game at an efficient level. Back in the days when I was a graphics arts student, yea, sure playing with scripts was fun. But I'm a system's analyst now. Going through the bits of program (even their code) is what I do for a profession. I seriously don't want to do it for my spare time at this point.

So again, which group was the outcry actually from? Because I actually keep up with the raid scene

Apparently you ONLY keep up with the raiding community, which is so very, very small. Yet disproportionately active on that one JP server.

And are you kidding me about raiders not complaining? Good lord, do you even look at the OFs?

I post on the OF (on both sides) so of course I read it. No progression groups complained about A6S and demanding nerfs, especially none of the world first groups beyond the strict time limit and having to start over when you wipe. Which fyi, Yoshi has already stated they watch the world first groups tackle the content. So unless I missed Lucrezia complaining about A6S on the OF..then I'm not sure where raiders complain. Maybe you're talking about the group of players that occasionally do raids like Coil and Alex Savage and not the ones who are world first progression? The "world first" groups don't exactly post on OF because, well, you have people too happy to tell you that you and raiding don't matter in this game, so why interact? Most progression groups stick with BG or Guildwork.

They did, however complain when SE nerfed it because not only were the nerfs actually unnecessary, they didn't make changes that are ACTUAL problems with that floor since no matter how you slice it, the main changes that nerf brought didn't exactly speed things up because a big wall in A6S for the more casual crowd are Blaster and Swindler and the main nerf was to Vortexer (final robot) which they aren't even getting to. So I'll ask you again:

Which group complained? The ones that believed Yoshida when he said Savage would be more tuned to Coil difficulty, or the group of players that were working on A7 and A8S thus not actually complaining about A6S?

Hint: Most progression groups beat A6S before the nerfs went into place.

Idk though, it's kind of weird to call a group of players "hardcore" in a non-hardcore game, especially a game that takes VERY little work to master its content. It's like considering people who cap tomes and get a weekly drop "hardcore" while ignoring the content base isn't exactly "hard" remember the basic distinction between "Hardcore" and "Casual" usually fell onto which type of games the person likes to play. Since hardcore in terms of MMOs usually means a group of gamers who get rewarded the best for their time and effort.

However XIV doesn't have the itemization to support that, because EVERYONE has the ability to get EVERYTHING, players just choose not to largely (it is a choice, don't kid yourself.) Now if there were more items like found in XI or even PSO2 where you do content to build certain weapons with unique effects, then you'd have a point about "hardcore players", otherwise, remember how Yoshi said it'd take 2-3 hours to do Palace of the Dead in a straight sitting? I'm guessing you'll consider people who cleared it quicker than that and obtained a weapon or two in the first week "hardcore" players despite being clearly "casual" content.

Hyrist wrote:

Not maybe, certinaly. If they expect the game to be playable with the controller they need to seriously rethink how they're creating their workflow.

Btw, some of the top players in XIV are controller players and there's an entire website dedicated to proving this, including Dragoons, and I don't just mean on the JP side either. So the game is beyond playable on controller. The issue is, up until the highest form of content, your rotation doesn't truly matter, which is why you never get that efficiency down because controllers have more than enough space for rotations even DRGs. DRG has the most elaborate rotation, but it also has the smoothest compared to, you know, Machinist.

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Honestly, icon swapping for straight combos would do well, and is a common mechanic in MMOs now. It quite possibly can be done with macros, but I maintain the stance that one should never have to become a programmer to play a game at an efficient level.

Yeah, it's a shame people were feeding SE that the older style WoW setup is "what MMOs should be" instead of telling SE to imporve on 1.x which had the overall better battle design. A big problem is Yoshi is far too scared of how players will treat each other to really do something good with the system. PvP vs PvE proves it, **** they already have the system in place for Machinist, DRK, SCH (probably SMN too), WHM and such where combos/free casts will activate occasionally, meaning they can easily have a system that removes quite a few button presses if they simply must remain on a rotation system.

However, many people say XIV is perfect as is which is why Yoshi went on record to say the formula won't change at all for 4.x and only hinted at a "simpler" rotation, but he's said the same thing quite a few times prior to Heavensward and well, people had to essentially relearn their job which is a big reason 3.x content is such a poor design because as I said there's really no content that forces or goads you into getting better, which is why you have people jumping straight into 60 content like Ex primals and not know a **** thing about their jobs or realistically, how to play.

Kind of why people were actually afraid of the "jump potion" Yoshi hinted at during E3, because despite how insanely helpful it would be, people already rarely know how to play or take the time to improve their DPS/Tanking/Healing, jumping straight to 60 in a game with very little "build up" content would be pretty bad, so despite feeling otherwise, 2.x had the better setup since the difficulty slowly ramped up and ex primals dropped useful gear which actually were some of the better items you could get, meaning..GASP! They already know how to create a better content flow and need to go back to it. People say Coil was hard, but honestly, keeping track of the party finder and even some old videos where shouting was the main form of gathering people at Wineport, more people did Coil compared to Alex Savage for a reason. Even if people did Turn 2 in a weird/lazy way (since its so much faster to just do it normally than sit and wait for enrage timer..as you could do 2-3 in the span of 1 enrage but I digress.)

Maybe you're talking about the group of players that occasionally do raids like Coil and Alex Savage and not the ones who are world first progression?

Hio wrote:

Which group complained? The ones that believed Yoshida when he said Savage would be more tuned to Coil difficulty, or the group of players that were working on A7 and A8S thus not actually complaining about A6S?

Again, your hardcore nature shines through. The percentage of raiders who aim for world firsts is even more insignificant than the entirety of the raiding community. And yes, the raiding community was complaining to the high heavens about the difficulty of coil 2, and then the lack of difficulty in coil 3. Let's not attempt to distract by dissecting exactly what raiders were complaining about. Heck, complaints by the raiding community even influenced extreme primals to do be designed more for hardcore groups than midcore players (I'm looking at you, Thordan Ex, with your nine different phases of mechanics to memorize).

The standing point is that raiders complained, and Yoshi listened. You implied Yoshi only listens to the filthy casuals, and you were/still are wrong.

XIV is a game designed more for casual/midcore gameplay and, yes, most of the game's updates and adjustments have stayed the course. But even still, Yoshi still listens to the hardcore players and definitely changes the game on their behalf. And (gasp!) not all of those changes are for the better.

If I were in charge -- and if I had the development team restrictions that Yoshi does -- I would have kicked the hardcore community to the curb long ago and invested fully in (FC-friendly) midcore content. You're incredibly fortunate that Yoshi is so willing to dedicate so many resources to your kind of content.

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Idk though, it's kind of weird to call a group of players "hardcore" in a non-hardcore game

Don't you think it's weird that hardcore players are so passionate about a non-hardcore game? I do.

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However, many people say XIV is perfect as is

Again, do you even read the OFs? Where are you seeing this? Or is this just you making another loaded statement that's only loosely based on reality?

You're incredibly fortunate that Yoshi is so willing to dedicate so many resources to your kind of content.

Yoshida said back during Coil 1 that the content they develop first isn't the version that gets released until after they make tweaks and changes to the content is THEN when they release it and in 3.0 they'll start releasing the original and an edited version (normal/story mode as people call it.) So in all actuality, you're lucky they decided to actually spend more time, money and resources developing an additional version of the content (story mode) instead of tuning one set of content to be reasonable which would then free up the valuable time and resources they need to create even more content since dropping story mode would free up quite a bit of resources and dev time to create something else, it's not just copy/paste/delete a move or two like you seem to think.

"Nah, the game would have failed, lots of people would have quit, blah blah blah!"

XIV did fine before Heavenswards was a thing and seems to be doing fine (even though most of it is just people on Balmung and Gilgamesh realistically), so I'm fairly sure them focus firing on making a well tuned raid content like they did back during 2.x era would have done so much better than now, since literally no one asked to make Savage a standard, people just wanted them to go back to Binding Coil difficulty.

Also, there was no Savage Coil 1 as optional content, there was Savage Coil 2 as optional content though which contradicts:

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And yes, the raiding community was complaining to the high heavens about the difficulty of coil 2

As you're not a raider maybe you're just not understanding the concept but, if raiders were complaining about the difficulty of Coil 2...why did Yoshida allow them to release the initial version of Coil that normally goes unreleased because it's significantly harder with far less indicators ..? Raiders were the ones who asked to see what the "harder coil" was like because actual progression raiders were already working on Turn 9 by that point and wanted additional challenge, not the playerbase that actually complained because the only people who were openly complaining were the ones going:

"I WANT TO EXPERIENCE THE COIL STORY. GIVE US A STORY MODE VERSION OF COIL."

So...maybe it's a cultural thing, but I just don't see how a group of people complain about something being too hard gets met with "here have an even harder version for no rewards other than a title!" by the director. I know Yoshida is weird about his decisions..but he's played DAoC..he knows that makes no sense lol.

Turn 4 was the make or break of Coil 1. Turn 5 had actual designs problems, so it's hard to comment on its difficulty, but Twintania was actually the easiest of all final bosses in Coil since it was just mechanics. Much like Titan Ex is extremely easy but was the hardest for so many people because..mechanics.

Turn 8 was the make or break of Coil 2 because it was a tight DPS check with a lot of interesting mechanics. Turn 7 was impossible for the casual crowd because it had 2 very specific mechanics people seem to just not comprehend:

Voice/Shriek and Renauld staggering.

Not necessarily hard, but definitely content that requires players on their game. Something XI really did prepare you for quite well.

Turn 11 was the make or break of coil 3 despite being on the easier side because again, it had very specific mechanics people just couldn't comprehend for some reason. (Tethers.)

You do realize:

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Heck, complaints by the raiding community even influenced extreme primals to do be designed more for hardcore groups than midcore players (I'm looking at you, Thordan Ex, with your nine different phases of mechanics to memorize).

Pure mechanic based fights were requested overall because even the "Filthy Casuals" IN YOUR WORDS (stop saying I've ever said this) were tired of the song & dance battles purely based on DPS checks and instant wipe mechanics and wanted things to be more based on thoughtful mechanics rather than scripted to the point if you're TOO good at the game you can actually wipe yourself ala Ifrit, Leviathan and Ramuh Ex or if your DPS is too terrible you'll enrage (Shiva Ex) as we're talking about coil era. Hey here's a fun fact:

Coil was supposed to be the stepping stone into entering alliance based content as Crystal Tower was supposed to be the actual hard raid but they chose to swap their positions due to delaying Crystal Tower and ever since the difficulties of Raid/Alliance content has been thrown off. So realistically, difficulty of this game has been in a weird position ever since 2.1.

You just hate raiders, that's fine, but stop blaming them because of the decisions you make with no gun to your head. If raiders are such a small part of the community, it is virtually impossible for them to shape anything yoshida decides when overall the game is on the easy side because of not listening to them. Were raiders the reason they released ilvl235 weapon in content accessible as early as level 17? Are raiders the reason in patch 3.38 you can get the item to upgrade your lore weapon to 240 without having to enter Midas Savage? Were raiders the reason they released Diadem which incidentally offered BiS pieces thus completely negating all raid content in a half patch? I mean..surely raiders complained so much that they obsoleted raid content for casual content........I mean, it's either/or. It can't be "yoshida listens to raiders which is why ex primals is designed for hardcore groups now" then suddenly "yoshida doesn't listen to raiders or else we wouldn't have such and such content at all if so"..like what is it? Lol. Ex primals are not hardcore, just because your hand won't be held through it and you have to actually ..dare I say be good at the game to get through it doesn't make it hardcore, this is kind of why other MMO communities usually mock the XIV playerbase when you bring the game up because the first thing they tend to comment on is how it's so glamour focused because players are scared to do content.

Then again...you're probably talking about people who actually do raid content and not "RAIDERS" specifically, as in progression raiders, but just tagging them as raiders because they set foot in raids, because if you were to say that in any raid community..honestly, THEN you'd get the behavior and attitude people talk about with "elitism", because that's akin to saying Dark Knight in XI makes viable healers when subbing WHM.

You do realize Thordan Ex dropped ilvl215 weapons, right? Why would you ever think that fight should have been a cake walk for just anyone to go through? That was basically stepping on the toes of raiders at the time because in terms of how this game is designed, there was no point in clearing A4S once Thordan came out since in yoshida's own words he said the weapons would help greatly in getting people through A3S, which as you probably don't know or have forgotten, even casual players were able to get through A1S and A2S and A3S is what was stonewalling everyone but the absolute best progression groups (world first runners.)

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Again, do you even read the OFs? Where are you seeing this? Or is this just you making another loaded statement that's only loosely based on reality?

When the guy in charge says the formula won't change, why would that be? If something isn't working, you change it. "If it ain't broke don't fix it", the fact he says it's too risky to change the formula means people find XIV perfectly fine as is or else he would be far more willing to change it.

So..I ask again, which group of players complained? I spent last night looking through a lot of 2014 early 2015 posts and the most I see are people wanting a story mode for coil so they can experience the story and people actually upset over the nerf to Turn 7. However when you look at the forums and groups where actual progression raiders post, you'll see that people were largely upset over Coil 3 being extremely easy and that people found Coil 2's difficulty somewhere in the middle of being good and bad for raiding since it was a mix of DPS check and Mechanics, but you also see a lot of people upset over Turn 2's enrage method to the point yoshida had to make a post saying it can be seen as a strategy instead of exploit. Are you really going to tell me raiders are the ones that created that strategy and largely used it during first coil spams..? The way you constantly blame raiders makes it seem it's not that they're a 'small part of the community' but the biggest and most important part since, i mean you even went as far to say thordan ex came about because of it.

Which again, fyi, is the actual fight and he's stated openly Thordan Story/Ex was pre-nerfed before launch.

You say raiders were complaining to the high heavens..you're definitely talking about the group of people who actually bothered to attempt the content, rather than sit around and say "ew raiding content get that out of my game, get rid of that content and those players make XIV great again."

I mean reading NA/EU OF side you see people complain about the difficulty of even leveling dungeons and people who constantly leave Steps/Final Steps/Seph (normal)/Chrysalis, are you really trying to get me to believe that they're the raiders you're talking about? Everyone complains about XIV, there's no denying that, but it's extremely hard to believe progression raiders have ever taken to the forums where you get can banned at the drop of a hat if you so much as post a screenshot with someone's name in it to complain about a game people so lovingly defend. You read the OFs, don't even try to deny that. I seen literally one person from a progression group I know of on Excal post about the game's state and he got torn apart to the point the topic got deleted because, well, the "filthy casuals" as you call them doesn't take too kindly to questioning the game's direction.

While it doesn't bother me, I find it hilarious some of the first things people say when SE posts new pictures "I hope it's in the mog station" "they should add this to mog station"..like, when you have so many players willing to toss money at your cash shop instead of doing content..can you really sit around and blame anyone for feeling a certain way about the state of the game? Instead of just calling them hardcore/raider and saying they don't belong in the game?

So...maybe it's a cultural thing, but I just don't see how a group of people complain about something being too hard gets met with "here have an even harder version for no rewards other than a title!"

Hardcore raiders wanted more of a challenge, and casual/midcore players didn't want to be shut out of meaningful storyline content. This was SE's attempt at a compromise. Clearly, you and other hardcore players didn't like it, and your complaints resulted in the development team announcing an adjustment in the item levels of what you can get in the raids versus through other options.

Yep, another option of the devs listening to hardcore players.

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You just hate raiders, that's fine, but stop blaming them because of the decisions you make with no gun to your head. If raiders are such a small part of the community, it is virtually impossible for them to shape anything yoshida decides when overall the game is on the easy side because of not listening to them.

I don't hate raiders any more than I hate religious people who knock on my door (I don't hate them). As long as they go away when I tell them I'm not interested, I'm totally cool with them.

Raiders are traditionally a valuable part of MMO communities. But games are changing, and players are changing, and raiders are a bit obsolete in games not built for hardcore gamers. I'm fine with hardcore raid content being in the game, but with limited development resources, they're fortunate to get so much attention in XIV.

Overall game design is on the easy side, yes. That is no secret. That is what I've been saying to you for months or years now. So it's concerning when Yoshi continually bends to the will of such a small percentage of the playerbase. But he's an old-school gamer at heart -- and to a degree, many of us are -- so I understand why it happens. It's a weakness, though, not a strength. He is letting nostalgia cloud his judgement.

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Then again...you're probably talking about people who actually do raid content and not "RAIDERS" specifically

I'm talking about people who raid (in un-nerfed content) on a regular basis and take it at least somewhat seriously.

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When the guy in charge says the formula won't change, why would that be? If something isn't working, you change it.

He says the formula won't change because the game is what it is. FFXIV will never be a horizontal game. It will never be an ideal game for hardcore players. You really need to accept this. Perhaps start preparing for Pantheon.

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So..I ask again, which group of players complained?

This isn't even what we're discussing.

Several posts ago, you implied that SE is more likely to listen to misguided casual players, and that's flat-out wrong. I've shown you how you are wrong. You've had no real answers to defend your incorrect claim.

Now, you're asking about which group of players complain. EVERYONE complains. You complain, I complain, Hyrist complains. We all just complain about different things.

But that's not what we're debating (and this isn't even much of a debate), so stop trying to change the subject.

I've never bought into this "Savage Coil is the original version" statement.

I mean it could be, and then before release they just went in and fixed a couple of the easier exploits people had found.

The fact of the matter is the "first version" of something is basically never released by any developer ever because it's almost always badly tuned and full of problems. This would be magnified in FFXIV which does no public testing so only the content is only ever exposed to the internal QA team.

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svlyons wrote:

If random outcomes aren't acceptable to you, then don't play with random people.

I think you're taking the statement a little too literally. The idea is that devs initial aim is to create content that is difficult for players with near perfect execution. From that point they scale it back for lower difficulties and/or nerf the content as needed to allow players to clear it more comfortably.

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Rinsui wrote:

Only hips + boobs all day and hips + boobs all over my icecream

HaibaneRenmei wrote:

30 bucks is almost free

cocodojo wrote:

Its personal preference and all, but yes we need to educate WoW players that this is OUR game, these are Characters and not Toons. Time to beat that into them one at a time.

Yoshida said back during Coil 1 that the content they develop first isn't the version that gets released until after they make tweaks and changes to the content is THEN when they release it and in 3.0 they'll start releasing the original and an edited version (normal/story mode as people call it.)

So the version we used to get back in 2.x era is the version they felt was right difficulty wise. Given how most workflow goes in development (and unless SE is on some absolutely obscure system) we definitely didn't see any of the "this is too hard" feedback until Final Coil many, many months later, just like it's guaranteed they already had "Spirit/Mother" or whatever they're calling the next Alexander branch made.

He has said before the Ex primals are the actual fights then they start redoing it by striping out mechanics and checks and release story/hard mode and due to how much resources that was taking up they started going strictly with "hard mode" to cover the story version and extreme to cover the actual gear producers, which is why hard modes no longer drop gear and why "story mode" for Alexander really is a waste when they could just tune one set of content from the get go, but "things change" and well, players seem to complain so much more than they did even back in the 2.x era now that they know Yoshi will bend over backwards for them if they're loud enough.

I mean Keeper of the Lake (Hard) is likely going to as always have the better gear design while the raid gear is going to be ugly as sin.

I think I am generally happy that basic content of FFXIV is not hard. Some basic content for FFXI can be quite hard (COP mission), and I think that is a fair assessment.

I really do not want to get in this raider vs causal debate (it seems we now have "political parties" here). I think we should just get along. Really, you do your really hard stuff, and I do my (easier) stuff, is a reasonable approach. I can carry on my business without an "ideological" enemy; things are not broken, let's not create fights to break things. Also I want to add - finding people to look down upon or finding people to be envy of is bad for your mental health.

Edited, Aug 18th 2016 11:31am by scchan

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Amanada (Cerberus-Retired) (aka MaiNoKen/Steven) -- Thank you for the fun times in Vana'diel

Art for the sake of art itself is an idle sentence. Art for the sake of truth, for the sake of what is beautiful and good — that is the creed I seek. - George Sand

A designer knows he has achieved perfection, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Just so you know, scchan, I'm not against raiders or raiding at all. My only beef is with the design decisions regarding XIV's endgame. It's as if the development team doesn't understand that most people in this game aren't raiders, even though the data repeatedly makes it painfully obvious.

If the team was more capable of pushing out a larger volume of content, then I'm sure we'd have a more diverse endgame scene that's engaging for everyone. But that doesn't seem to be the case, and so far the devs haven't prioritized in the right ways.

The result is a game in which most people feel a bit lacking. Casual/midcore gamers really enjoy playing, but many struggle to remain interested after realizing they're grinding for no reason in particular, because there isn't a true endgame scene made for them. Meanwhile, hardcore gamers (which make up a very small portion of the playerbase) tend to dislike the rest of the game, then feel like there just isn't enough raiding, which is really the only reason they play.

If the devs reconfigured endgame to be more accessible for casual/midcore players, then you'd have a huge percentage of players who'd be overall happy and engaged with the game -- and really, that should be the goal.

And yeah, that might mean alienating hardcore gamers, but this was never meant to be a hardcore game. With limited development resources, I just think it makes way more sense to fully commit to a target audience that is hundreds of thousands of people larger.

If the devs reconfigured endgame to be more accessible for casual/midcore players, then you'd have a huge percentage of players who'd be overall happy and engaged with the game -- and really, that should be the goal.

Here lies the problem:

What is "midcore"?

Especially when what is midcore, as per design, still gets considered "hardcore" or "requires a static"? EX Primals and Coil were designed to be more midcore than anything because you simply just had to improve yourself in order to get through Coil, you couldn't just go in and bash your head for 20 minutes and come out with a clear like people (seemingly) expect.

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With limited development resources, I just think it makes way more sense to fully commit to a target audience that is hundreds of thousands of people larger.

So..what's the target audience? Because I'm looking at OF (NA) and Reddit and I see plenty of people complaining about players not really trying even in DF and that's just ignoring the topics about glamour glamour glamour. So from what I'm seeing, is they focus on the target audience this game won't last that long no matter how you slice it. Plenty of people may like to play dress up and may love throwing money at the mog station, but there was a point even they too got bored as **** due to the 5 month gap between HW and 3.1, so if the only content update is glamour related..do you honestly believe that's what will keep everyone happy?

What they should do, is stop spreading their limited resources thin and create content that if people can't do it, they simply can't do it, if they want to do it, they will. Coil had the higher participation rate, key word, PARTICIPATION rate. Whereas Alexander Savage, many don't even want to bother. That alone should say they should go back to the Coil design.

In your words:

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that's engaging for everyone.

There is absolutely nothing preventing people from engaging in the current content base. So that circles back around to:

What is the content that will be 'engaging' for everyone that is not only balanced reward wise but won't completely negate doing other content? This is why you'll hear people say it sounds like people just want handouts.

Also:

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Just so you know, scchan, I'm not against raiders or raiding at all

You literally said you'd kick them out of the game if you had your say so. That's...kind of being against it and said players.

So..what's the target audience? Because I'm looking at OF (NA) and Reddit and I see plenty of people complaining about players not really trying even in DF and that's just ignoring the topics about glamour glamour glamour.

The question isn't "what's the target audience." The question is, "how can we better engage the target audience?" And by now, it should be completely obvious that highly technical and punishing raids isn't the way to target that audience.

Hardcore players (who often have statics) are more likely to enjoy what casual/midcore players refer to as "beating your head against the wall" while trying to memorize these heavily scripted fights. But to the rest of us, that's just not fun, nor is it even feasible for most people to do. Many of us have limited playtime or can only be online during inconsistent play periods. Hardcore gamers often build their lives around raiding, but that's just not how most gamers operate -- especially those of us who are older.

You can add all the rewards you want for this content -- it won't matter, because people don't find it fun. Most people don't want to do "raiding" in the way that you think of it. That's why I say that hardcore raiding is becoming somewhat obsolete. The problem isn't that players are stupid or incapable. The problem is they're not being given a form of endgame that appeals to them.

What kind of person would spend so much time doing something that he or she doesn't enjoy?

Also, don't be distracted by the fact people post about glamor. I've even posted about glamor in the past (though not very often). I'd much rather have a viable form of endgame to care about than glamor.

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There is absolutely nothing preventing people from engaging in the current content base.

Yes, there are many factors preventing people from engaging in the current content base, and we've beaten these factors like a thousand dead horses on these forums.

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You literally said you'd kick them out of the game if you had your say so. That's...kind of being against it and said players.

Except it's not at all.

If the development team had the resources to make adequate endgame for everyone, then I'd have no problem with SE spending so much time on the raiding community. It's just like in XI, I had absolutely no problems with players or resources dedicated to ground kings, sea camping, etc. Different strokes for different folks.

But if you're preparing food for 500,000 people, and 475,000 of those people like cheeseburgers while the other 25,000 like grilled chicken -- and you can only buy one type of meat -- then it's only logical to serve cheeseburgers rather than chicken, even though technically nothing is stopping those 475,000 people from eating chicken.

Yes, if I had to choose one or the other, I'd cook only cheeseburgers and tell the other 25,000 to either suck it up or find a restaurant that specializes in chicken.

f the development team had the resources to make adequate endgame for everyone, then I'd have no problem with SE spending so much time on the raiding community. It's just like in XI, I had absolutely no problems with players or resources dedicated to ground kings, sea camping, etc. Different strokes for different folks.

That's what WoW does. But then, WoW has a real dev team.

____________________________

svlyons wrote:

If random outcomes aren't acceptable to you, then don't play with random people.

Just so you know, scchan, I'm not against raiders or raiding at all. My only beef is with the design decisions regarding XIV's endgame. It's as if the development team doesn't understand that most people in this game aren't raiders, even though the data repeatedly makes it painfully obvious.

If the team was more capable of pushing out a larger volume of content, then I'm sure we'd have a more diverse endgame scene that's engaging for everyone. But that doesn't seem to be the case, and so far the devs haven't prioritized in the right ways.

The result is a game in which most people feel a bit lacking. Casual/midcore gamers really enjoy playing, but many struggle to remain interested after realizing they're grinding for no reason in particular, because there isn't a true endgame scene made for them. Meanwhile, hardcore gamers (which make up a very small portion of the playerbase) tend to dislike the rest of the game, then feel like there just isn't enough raiding, which is really the only reason they play.

If the devs reconfigured endgame to be more accessible for casual/midcore players, then you'd have a huge percentage of players who'd be overall happy and engaged with the game -- and really, that should be the goal.

And yeah, that might mean alienating hardcore gamers, but this was never meant to be a hardcore game. With limited development resources, I just think it makes way more sense to fully commit to a target audience that is hundreds of thousands of people larger.

Edited, Aug 18th 2016 8:50am by Thayos

I am not a raider myself.

I do want to pose a question and to everyone : how do you define "end game" and "raiding"?

If I define end game as doing level cap dungeons, the choices may indeed be lacking; I often find myself doing same thing all the time, but that is not the complete story. I only login a few hours of week, the amount of content I need to play weekly for meeting the 450 is just enough. I guess the devs have tuned the number of content and the amount of time needed to complete to players with limited login time. In some ways, I agree with you that the audience of the game is indeed for more casual side.

One thing to watch out about having a more diverse (end game) content is that it either dilutes players (meaning longer wait time for everyone) or you run into problems with balance. If the reward and difficulty of the more diverse content is not balanced, you will still winded up having everyone doing the same content (devs always underestimate how efficiency and fad crazed are the players), and some content goes completed wasted (remember Ballistia in FF11?).

I really don't know what is the correct balance. Game design is an art (as in art of managing business or military tactics); the true solution is often one cannot put down in words. However, it is easy to chit-chat about it while sitting on an armchair.

Edited, Aug 18th 2016 3:46pm by scchan

Edited, Aug 18th 2016 3:49pm by scchan

____________________________

Amanada (Cerberus-Retired) (aka MaiNoKen/Steven) -- Thank you for the fun times in Vana'diel

Art for the sake of art itself is an idle sentence. Art for the sake of truth, for the sake of what is beautiful and good — that is the creed I seek. - George Sand

A designer knows he has achieved perfection, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I do want to pose a question and to everyone : how do you define "end game" and "raiding"?

First, endgame.

A textbook definition of endgame is probably what you do beyond the level cap. But when I think of endgame -- and when most gamers I know think of endgame -- what we're really focusing on is post-cap content that requires some kind of investment.

That's why I don't consider things like leveling dungeons or 24-man raids to be part of endgame. This content isn't designed to require any kind of investment beyond simply repeating it. There's no real need to organize. There's no room for strategy. There aren't any branching paths or different objectives for different people who play different jobs. There's no kind of preparation required. It really feels no different than the standard 0-60 leveling process.

Raids and extreme primals are XIV's endgame, but both are essentially the same kind of content where your eight-man party is in a heavily scripted fight that requires hours to learn even with a static group. While this is a valid form of endgame, it's simply not going to be for everyone. In fact, the data shows that most people don't want to raid.

Especially on the OFs, I keep seeing posts that more people would raid if the rewards were better, and I couldn't disagree more. People would already be raiding if they either 1) wanted to raid and/or 2) had the time for it. I think you could make raid gear 20 iLevels better than anything else in the game and people still wouldn't do it, because people don't like raiding. And outside of the raids, there's really no other viable form of true endgame to put that gear to use.

Next, raiding.

When I talk about "raiding," I'm talking about it in the context of what we have in FFXIV -- rigid content for a set number of people that requires a ton of repetition before you can start winning.

When I talk about "raiders," I'm talking about people who regularly dedicate enough time toward raiding to actually be successful. Even though I do the extreme primals, I don't consider myself a raider because my static only has time to play for one hour per week (and we haven't had any time the past three weeks when our schedules all match up).

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One thing to watch out about having a more diverse (end game) content is that it either dilutes players (meaning longer wait time for everyone) or you run into problems with balance.

This would only be the case if XIV's endgame remains chained to the eight-man party requirements while leaning heavily on scripted, punishing mechanics.

FFXI had an amazingly diverse endgame, and I never struggled to find groups to do different things with. That's because XI's endgame wasn't chained down to strict membership requirements, and fights didn't lean on artificial difficulty from heavily scripted mechanics. The freshest level 75 players could jump in with the most experienced dynamis linkshells and not doom their runs to failure, thus the endgame community was far more inviting and accessible. It's the opposite in XIV, where a single new person can be the difference between care-free farming and a few hours of head-bashing frustration.

The question isn't "what's the target audience." The question is, "how can we better engage the target audience?" And by now, it should be completely obvious that highly technical and punishing raids isn't the way to target that audience.

Hardcore players (who often have statics)

See, that's the thing. Statics aside (again this is largely an NA/EU thing) when you look at what the in-game systems tell you:

All this says is "Raids (ARR/HW)" nothing differentiates "Hardcore - Only do this if you have a static and good at the game" and "Casual - Do this if you suck at the game or have no time or desire to get better."

As every single piece of content in this game all fall into the same category:

You have to learn it.

Some people learn and master content faster than others but there's a VERY obvious line between people who try and people who flatout give no ***** about how they play or that they're playing with others.

This is why I take issue with the whole "hardcore players" thing because you constantly repeat this: This game isn't hardcore and isn't designed to be hardcore. So one cannot technically be a "hardcore player" in a game on the easy side of things. You can be a hardcore gamer, as in your life revolves around gaming and your main hobby is gaming, just like I'm a hardcore violist, but if you happen to be good at FFXIV..you can pretty much clear any content especially once you learn it. The problem is, people immediately choose not to learn a set of content. So this in particular:

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more likely to enjoy what casual/midcore players refer to as "beating your head against the wall"

This refers to every bit of FFXIV content until you, well, you know, actually clear it. I promise you everyone was beating their head against the wall with Titan, Titan and Ifrit Ex and even Ramuh Ex, which is why when you seen Ramuh Ex farms back in the day you were literally fighting to get into them because so many people just couldn't do it..and Ramuh Ex was no where near coil difficulty. Heck even today people beat their head against the wall in Steps of Faith, Final Steps of Faith, Titan HM, Alexander Gordias/Midas normal and Weeping City... so we can safely say it's players in general that simply need to improve, because when I don't see "new player bonus" pop up and we're wiping constantly, there's no longer an excuse that can be given :p Even if you only cleared it once..you cleared it once, you know what the fight has in store for you..suddenly forgetting you need to tank an add in Final Steps...is just....

Anyway...

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You can add all the rewards you want for this content -- it won't matter, because people don't find it fun.

Ah, but as proven with Palace of the Dead, the content itself is so underwhelming and a huge missed opportunity..however, the fact it's an INSANELY easy source of Tier V materia, levels and ilvl235 (highest level ilvl weapon until next week that serves non raiders perfectly fine) means people will gladly do it whether they enjoy it or not.

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Also, don't be distracted by the fact people post about glamor. I've even posted about glamor in the past (though not very often). I'd much rather have a viable form of endgame to care about than glamor.

It's pretty distracting when that's pretty much all that gets added to the game (not to mention people ask for less viable content and more glamour/easier content) because their ilvl doesn't help at all because they release it AFTER the fact. Take the dungeon gear for example - Ilvl215 when 220,230 and 240 are so readily available and they look significantly better than the actual raid gear? Even if you're fresh to the game you get ilvl210 > 230 (lore) pretty **** quickly.

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Yes, there are many factors preventing people from engaging in the current content base, and we've beaten these factors like a thousand dead horses on these forums.

Not unless the game physically prevents you from accessing the content. Because if you play 1-2 hours a day at max, again, what prevents you from doing the content available? Especially knowing that non-world first groups only run certain content 1-3 hours a day 2-sometimes 3 times a week. :) The common excuse/reasoning is:

"Don't have time."

Well, if you have time to run dungeons or ex primals, you have time to learn/do coil/alexander, especially the first 2 floors on both (Father/Son) since it takes equally as much time as it does to learn any other content in the game unless..surprise surprise, it's extremely easy. The biggest roadblock with Coil/Alexander (progression) is your ilvls may need boosting to REALLY help you get through it, but most people cleared it/pushed through it prior to 235-easy 240 weapons.

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Except it's not at all.

In your own words, you defined raiders as essentially people who do the raids. So if you'd want to kick out a part of the community, that's technically against raiding and raiders, since "kicking to the curb" means "get out." If you want to kick out "only hardcore players"...well, that's kind of why you get attitudes you do run into, since it's pretty funny that it seems ok to **** on people who do the game's content but god forbid you call out that players just really don't want to try, honestly.

Btw, barring legacy status, additional perks and additional optional costs like MS mounts and going with the most common subscription, even if there is say only 89,000 total raiders, that's an additional 1,334,110 a month, counting USD you'd want to basically say "nah you don't matter." since realistically, SE is still a business. Since based on a quick scan of achievements and people who actually did Coil/Alexander Gordias (since lots did it before the A3S wall took hold), there's quite a lot to be made if SE just simply...does the content back in 2.x era.

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It's just like in XI, I had absolutely no problems with players or resources dedicated to ground kings, sea camping, etc. Different strokes for different folks.

You're right! It is just like XI - Except people realize that with XIV they don't have to do much of anything in order to make money. With FFXI and DQX they had to do things with the platform because the type of progression systems they utilize mattered more. Ground Kings are just NMs on a timer that takes quite a higher bit of skill to do than Leaping Lizzy. SKY/SEA were entire systems that branched off of itself.

XIV has no content that branches off because it technically can't due to needing to restrict everyone as they don't create lasting content because ****, the guy himself said he's having his team develop with the knowledge that people will do content when it comes out and maybe take 1-2 month break and come back on a new patch, he doesn't care about concurrent players, just the potential players in general. So while it's easy to try to blame the fact they create **** near ONE set of content every 6 months versus the 4-7 other set of content that comes out in between said ONE set of content...you have to take a look at the way they design XIV overall, you could do Coil, but you needed better gear and well better skill at the game. How did you do that? By doing Crystal Tower and EX Primals. When EX primal quest came out they offered an ilvl90 weapon, which conflicted with Turn5's weapon..did SE go "Hmm...LETS AT ILVL 95 TO A NEW PRIMAL!"...no..they simply adjusted the ilvl and stats of the Turn 5 weapons, thus maintaining the step - by - step nature of the games progression.

3.0 is just..a very weird setup. Bismarck was DoA. No 2.x content was ever DoA beyond PvP (no one plays FF MMOs strictly for the PvP.)

The problem is, people immediately choose not to learn a set of content.

No, the problem is people don't want to do heavily punishing raids. It's not fun for a lot of people. It's insane to expect people to want to do things they don't find fun.

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Ah, but as proven with Palace of the Dead, the content itself is so underwhelming and a huge missed opportunity..however, the fact it's an INSANELY easy source of Tier V materia, levels and ilvl235 (highest level ilvl weapon until next week that serves non raiders perfectly fine) means people will gladly do it whether they enjoy it or not.

Or maybe -- just maybe -- all those people who don't enjoy raiding find Palace of the Dead to be more fun? :O I know that I sure do, to the point that I hope Yoshi-P eventually expands on this system to be a stronger form of endgame.

Don't fool yourself into thinking Palace of the Dead is taking people away from raiding. It's just giving people who don't want to raid something to do.

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It's pretty distracting when that's (glamor) pretty much all that gets added to the game

No, Hio, glamor is not all that gets added to the game. For many casual and midcore players, the various pieces of gear that get added are great for gearing up our other jobs.

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Not unless the game physically prevents you from accessing the content.

This might be the weakest argument you keep on making.

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Well, if you have time to run dungeons or ex primals, you have time to learn/do coil/alexander, especially the first 2 floors on both...

Ah, but you keep forgetting that many people don't find hardcore raiding to be fun. And this dovetails into the weak argument you keep making (which I pointed out above). Why do you consistently blame players for not wanting to play content they don't enjoy?

If players would rather use their limited free time to grind the same dungeon for the thousandth time versus trying to join a raid group, then that's a pretty crystal-clear sign that raiding just isn't attractive for a multitude of reasons. The problem is raiding, not the player.

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In your own words, you defined raiders as essentially people who do the raids. So if you'd want to kick out a part of the community, that's technically against raiding and raiders, since "kicking to the curb" means "get out."

Nope, you don't get to take me out of context or put words into my mouth. I've been extremely clear on what I mean, and I express my thoughts much better than you do. Quote me correctly or don't do it at all. Seriously, consider this your first warning. This tactic will not become acceptable.

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You're right! It is just like XI - Except people realize that with XIV they don't have to do much of anything in order to make money.

This would only be the case if XIV's endgame remains chained to the eight-man party requirements while leaning heavily on scripted, punishing mechanics.

FFXI had an amazingly diverse endgame, and I never struggled to find groups to do different things with. That's because XI's endgame wasn't chained down to strict membership requirements, and fights didn't lean on artificial difficulty from heavily scripted mechanics. The freshest level 75 players could jump in with the most experienced dynamis linkshells and not doom their runs to failure, thus the endgame community was far more inviting and accessible. It's the opposite in XIV, where a single new person can be the difference between care-free farming and a few hours of head-bashing frustration.

Edited, Aug 18th 2016 1:59pm by Thayos

This is the same reason I don't do many contents in the game. Punishing mechanics are indeed quite frustrating. This is why I question if running dungeons hitting 450 is satisfactory experience.

And about Dynamics and Sky, it is true that it is easy to jump in to be part of it. However, you also have oversimplified certain problems - the more people there are, the more diluted the distribution of the drops are. There are ways to manage the distribution of drops in FFXI, but that often leads to dramas, loot stealing etc. FFXIV loot distribution system is more straightforward and harder to cheat on, but that system only works because of the role system works. That very role system, as you have fairly criticised, has many limitations that I agree. FFXI drama are like FFXIV punishing mechanics - a huge turn off to many players. Which is one is better or worse, I have no idea. Game design, as I say, is an art; if you think you have a clear answer, that answer is probably incomplete.

There is simply no perfect system. I think I have spoken enough; I spend last 7 days writing documents listing caveats of doing and analysing things in different ways; I don't want to do the same for a game excessively. I didn't log into FFXIV today even I could have. I just don't feel like playing today x_X.

Edited, Aug 18th 2016 6:00pm by scchan

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Amanada (Cerberus-Retired) (aka MaiNoKen/Steven) -- Thank you for the fun times in Vana'diel

Art for the sake of art itself is an idle sentence. Art for the sake of truth, for the sake of what is beautiful and good — that is the creed I seek. - George Sand

A designer knows he has achieved perfection, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry